Kip — our bestest puppy

I can't tell you how many people have asked me to blog about Kip. It surprises me because I didn't think people really wanted to know about our life with Kip, but they do, so here ya go.

Kip is now almost a year old and for the most part full-grown. I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into when Marty brought that cute fuzzy little pup into the house last winter. He's been a lot, a lot, a lot of work.

There was potty-training and I think I talked about what a pain that was. He is a super smart dog when it comes to most everything else, sit, lay-down, roll over, all came pretty easy. Fetch was inate and he drives us NUTS with his constant toys in our laps. But, potty-training? Yeah, not so smart.

For awhile, I kept looking at this little pup and hoping that I didn't screw him up. He needed to be nice, not bite, not run away, learn to swim, how to ride in the car ... it was overwhelming. And, then I thought maybe since he was kinda smart and a Border Collie/Australian Shepherd mix that maybe he needed a job to do to keep him occupied. I Googled stuff like agility training, fly-ball, frisbee and hurdle races. I thought maybe I was doing this dog a disservice by not molding him into a trophy winner.

But, then he'd poop on the rug and I realized that there was no way I had time to train him to do anything more than live in our house in an acceptable manner. I felt bad about that.

Until one day, I saw Kip, now big, laying patiently on the floor as Marek locked his head rather roughly in his arms, layed his full weight on him and whispered, "You're my bestest puppy."

Soaking up all our extra love and energy is Kip's job. His job is to be our pet, establishing a relationship with each of us, be it cuddle bug or wrestler or confindant.

He doesn't need to bring home trophies or impress our friends with neat tricks. There's nothing wrong with keeping a dog just because you have enough room to love him. It has its mutual rewards.

In fact, the folks at Purina agree with me. "Recent findings from a study conducted by Purina, such as dog families participate in healthy behaviors more frequently than non-dog families, and children with dogs are 20% more likely to play outside every day than children without dogs," said Kelsea Olson, from Thinkable Results who shared this video with me.

I realized that, in the past year, we indeed have become a dog family and I'm pretty sure Kip is pretty happy just being "our bestest puppy."